Chapter Three: Last Will and Testament

The Twoson woods were deathly quiet. Tracy winced with every step, foot falling on a dead branch or pile of desiccated leaves no matter how careful she was; the path that had cut through these woods was nearly gone now, covered with litter from the dead trees. She couldn't see any signs of Giygan patrol - if nothing else, they would have cleared the path a bit - but it never hurt to be stealthy, and right now she was a walking target.

There was a glint of metal in the corner of her eye, and reflexively, Tracy hit the ground spread-eagle, waiting for the loud footsteps of a Starman approach. When no such footsteps came, she dared to breathe again, looking up and trying to get her bearings. The metal she'd seen was off in the woods, well off the path, and whatever it was, it wasn't moving.

Tracy picked herself up off the ground, wiping off the grime of the forest floor, and began to stalk towards the metal object. As she drew closer, she could make out the shape more clearly: a small rocketship made of silvery metal, badly dented by its impact but otherwise intact. Stenciled on it were words in English: "UNSCREW NOSE CONE."

If this was a Giygan trap, it was a damned strange one, and if it wasn't, who knew what could be inside? Carefully, she approached the nose cone of the rocket, grasping it and gently twisting off. Up close, the metal was obviously beginning to corrode, but with time the creaking metal began to turn on its threads, and soon Tracy had the rocket open. Inside was a thick manila envelope, rumpled-looking but apparently undamaged by the passage of time. Tracy reached in to grab it; it was weathered and sealed, and it had a satisfying heft to it. Either someone'd sent the world's longest supersonic love letter, or there was something of real value in here.

Whatever it was, someone'd built a rocket just to get it to Twoson, and the least Tracy could do was read it. She tucked the envelope under her arm, let the nose cone of the rocket drop with a thunk to the forest floor, and headed back towards the path. No use abandoning what she'd come here for, and whatever she had here could be read as easily in Twoson as in Onett.


As she'd feared, Twoson was a ghost town. The city clearly hadn't been hit as hard as Onett had; perhaps half the buildings were still standing, and the streets were clean, so someone'd kept living here long enough to take care of the corpses. Still, the buildings bore the pockmarks of long neglect, and the air smelled faintly rotten and more than a little musty. Maybe whoever'd survived had been rounded up by the Starmen afterwards, or maybe they'd set out to the greener pastures of the east, but either way, they were gone.

Tracy drifted almost unconsciously towards Burglin Park. As she'd feared but expected, it was a blasted ruin, the green space of her childhood replaced with a maze of fallen trees and destroyed market stalls. Whoever'd survived in Twoson had no doubt declared it as a lost cause, and it was hard to blame them, but for right now it meant privacy without having to break into some dead man's house. She picked her way down the old path, finally finding a clearing big enough to settle down on the worn turf and open the envelope.

The aging tape and glue yielded easily to her hands, and Tracy withdrew the papers inside, dozens of pages of looseleaf covered in crabbed handwriting. This was definitely from a survivor, then: someone who hadn't had access to anything as civilized as a typewriter, and they'd had to make every every line of the paper count. At the top of the first page was a date and salutation - maybe this was a letter after all?

Settling in, Tracy began to read.


June 5th, 2006

Dear Reader,

First of all, I can't say how glad I am that you're reading this. Your possession of this document means that the capsule has safely made landfall and has avoided interception by Giygas's forces. Maybe you're somewhere safe, or maybe it's just been lucky, but either way, now we have hope.

My name is Loid Trask. I'm 28 years old, and I've been fighting Giygas for nearly all my life. Nearly twenty years ago, my friends and I faced the first wave of attack by Giygas and his forces. We were only children, but he was unprepared for human resistance, and we managed to drive him away from Earth. We settled into normal lives, and none of us expected Giygas to come back, let alone return as swiftly and bloodily as he did.

His first strike was quick, and it was the one that hurt the most. On their way home from the grocery store, my friends Ninten and Ana were gunned down in the street by a disguised assassin robot; they were dead before they even realized who attacked them, let alone why. It was a crushing loss for all of us. They were both beautiful people, the kindest I'd ever known, and Ninten had been the first to give me a chance. To this day, I'll never know if Giygas killed them first just because they were psychics, and thus the biggest liabilities, or whether he did it just for revenge.

The invasion forces arrived within weeks of their death, and while the military tried and failed to hold them off, those of us who'd fought Giygas before began forming a resistance. There were only three of us left who knew what we were getting into: me, my friend and comrade-in-arms Teddy, and Pippi, an old friend of Ninten's I'd gone to college with. We'd been dating for a few months before the attack, and she stayed with me even afterwards; I'll never know why, but I'll always be grateful that we had the time we did.

We fought as hard as we could, but we were badly outnumbered, and Giygas was only getting stronger. While I was mostly working R&D at the beginning, trying to refine our available technology to repel the incursion, I found myself at the front lines more and more often as our forces dwindled. We managed to hold out for nearly seven years, but our death knell came four months ago, when a squad of Starmen found our base. We kept up the fight as long as we could, but they sent wave after wave, and we fell. Teddy was cut down in front of me, and I found Pippi afterwards among the bodies. She'd been telling me every day for years not to expect her home, and finally it came true.

A few of us managed to escape the base and scattered to the four winds. I found our last secure laboratory facility, less of a base and more of a bolt-hole in the ruins of Ellay, and I've been working alone ever since. At last, though, I've finished the prototype. It's been in the works since long before the second Giygan assault, but I've finally completed the plans for the world's first working time machine.

It's an extraordinary claim, I know, but it's true. I've included the schematics; the theory is complicated, but the actual assembly shouldn't be too much trouble for anyone with the proper mindset. I sent the schematics and this message in the hopes that someone would retrieve it and be able to put our creation to use. I don't need to tell you how powerful a time machine could be, or just how much we need the chance it might offer. If we find a way to stop Giygas early enough, we might be able to erase this all from history.

There's one catch: as far as I can tell, this prototype time machine isn't able to handle living tissue, just inanimate objects. I have no reason to believe that I'll survive the first test. I uwill/u test it, though; if it's successful, I'll turn the clock back, and if it's not, then I'd still rather die trying to fight than die on my knees when Giygas's forces find me. Launching this rocket will lead them right to this lab, but for better or for worse, I'll be gone when they arrive. I more or less know it's suicide, but I think Pippi would have wanted it this way.

Good luck and Godspeed, whoever you are, wherever you may be. Our work, and our story, is in your hands now.

Sincerely,
Loid Trask


It was a survivor's story, all right. A part of Tracy hated herself for not feeling much more than a dull sense of recognition, but every story these days ran the same. He'd opposed Giygas, and he'd suffered for it; so had her family, and so had the whole world. Loid Trask had obviously been a brave man, and inventive, but he hadn't been special. Besides, if the date at the top and her personal timekeeping efforts were to both be believed, this letter had been written just over three years ago. Whatever had happened, Trask was long gone.

Tracy began to page through the other looseleaf sheets. As promised, they were schematics for something, diagrams and blueprints and pages of calculations and component lists; it washed over her, and she found herself understanding none of it. Could this really be a time machine, or had Trask been crazy? It'd take someone else to say for sure, but even if he was crazy, it was an understandable delusion. A time machine would be the answer to so much.

Assuming, of course, they could figure out how to actually use it. Cutting off Giygas before he could reach his full strength would be a dream come true, but without a plan, a dream was all it was. What would that mean? Going back to Trask's friends and reinforcing them? But if they'd only been kids, they probably couldn't have done much more than they had. Then again, Ness and his friends had only been kids, too. Would saving the world mean convincing the adults something was wrong? Would it mean mobilizing the army? Contacting the President? Now that was a pipe dream; nobody would have believed in Giygas before the arrival of the aliens and the rise of the possessed, and Tracy was fairly sure that, by then, military intervention was probably hopeless.

And yet... and yet, if these notes were right, she held the plans for a working time machine. She couldn't throw that possibility away, could she? Even if she didn't know how to use it now, maybe she'd figure something out. After all, having a time machine meant you had time to think about how to use it, didn't it? And time to figure out how to build it, for that matter.

Tracy slid the papers back into their envelope before standing up, weaving her way back out of Burglin Park. With luck, she'd be home before dark; given how long the rocket had been out unmolested, she was guessing there weren't any Giygan patrols to worry about, but she didn't want to test her luck. For once, she was carrying something she cared about, and it wasn't a day to take risks.


Tracy awoke to breeze on her face.

Her eyes snapped open, and she tried quickly to get her bearings. Had the tarp come open, or had one of the windows been broken in a storm? No, she realized, with a lurch in her stomach - she wasn't even at home. She was on her feet, in fact, somewhere outside: an old clearing, bare stone and dead scrub surrounded by the dead forest. The wind rattled the husks of the trees, and the sky was the flat grey-black of the hours before dawn.

She reconstructed the past few hours. She'd made it home from Twoson just before dusk, tucked away the envelope, forced down some hardtack and water, and laid down to rest and think. It all got fuzzy then, and she must have dozed off. God, had she sleepwalked here? She hadn't done it since childhood, and even then, it had just been a few nights of crashing through the hallway and frightening her mother. How had she gotten this far from home without so much as a bruished shin?

The comforting weight of the stone was still in her pocket, and she pulled it out on reflex. The stone was surprisingly warm in her hand, more than it should be from her body heat alone, and she could almost swear it was vibrating. Tracy frowned, stepping forward idly, and the stone nearly jumped in her hand. She closed her fist around it, and its song began... and then it built upon itself, a new, strange harmony weaving into the tune. The song was still changing, and soon it was more than a song. Snatches of words -

- a sanctuary for the chosen of the Earth. Take power from this place -

Her mother, younger than Tracy had ever known her, rocking a cradle.

- Draw its strength into the Sound Stone, Chosen -

Ness out in the yard, throwing a stick to King.

- first of eight Sanctuaries. Make these places your own.

Tracy stumbled forward, then fell to her knees. At last, in the growing light, she could see where she was: Giant Step, in the mountains north of the city. They'd always said it was a haunted place, but now she understood. It wasn't haunted; it was ipsychic,/i psychic like the stone clutched tight in her hand. The stone had been looking for Ness, and it had found her instead and drawn her here.

And Giant Step was... God, her head was still swimming. A "Sanctuary," waiting for the "Chosen?" Waiting, she knew, for Ness? Even she could feel the power here, restless and masterless, and she could only imagine what Ness might have done with it if he'd had a chance. With this "Sound Stone" to guide him, maybe he could have grown strong enough to fight Giygas possibly. Maybe he could have won.

It all snapped together in her head. She'd wondered about a way to use that time machine, and here it had been in her pocket all along. The Sound Stone could give Ness a fighting chance, and the time machine could get it to him. Maybe it was fate, or maybe it was just good luck, but she had a chance. God help her, she had a chance.

But even with that clarity, her head was still buzzing, and she needed to think. Tracy turned back towards the path south, forcing herself homeward on sore legs. Maybe she had bruised a shin after all; with the adrenaline, it was hard to tell.


It was after dawn when Tracy got home, and the house was as she left it, undisturbed but troublingly quiet. In the weeks since Picky's death, she still hadn't adjusted to living alone: it wasn't just the company she missed, but the sound of his breathing and the feel of his proximity, the things she'd taken for granted. Now he was gone, and so were all those little comforts. No wonder he'd wanted her to go looking for other survivors; if she lived alone for too long, Tracy feared, madness would come soon enough.

She headed back to her bedroll, closing her eyes and trying not to focus on the cold sheets and the silence around her. Some residue of Giant Step was still humming in her head, and Tracy decided she'd have to try and use it. If this plan had any chance of succeeding, she'd have to try and capture whatever it was that Ness's friend had done so long ago to reach faraway help, project her message out and touch other minds. Whatever latent psychic powers she might have probably weren't enough to reach past the Twoson city limits, but she had to try.

To anyone who can hear me, she began, I need your help. I need a scientist or an engineer - someone who can read blueprints and build machines. I'm here in Onett, and I have the schematics for something very important, but I can't build it on my own. If you can, and if you can reach me... She hesitated, uncertain if she was overstating her case, but she decided what she was about to think wasn't an exaggeration. We can save the world.

Tracy let her mind and her words drift away from herself, through the night sky and over the cloud layer. How far they were going, she couldn't say; all she'd done was the psychic equivalent of shouting from the rooftops. But sometimes, a shout from the rooftop could be heard, and it was better than sitting on priceless documents and hoping for a miracle, wasn't it?

Tracy was hoping for miracles. She couldn't help it. That was the problem with hope: even the tiniest grain of it wormed under your skin and into your heart. It was toxic. The more she thought about it, though, the more she thought Loid Trask was right. It was better to die hoping than die withering away.

The message felt stable now, and Tracy let it run itself as she began to fade away into sleep. The day had been longer than she'd imagined when she'd set out for Twoson, and the fatigue was beginning to catch up with her, even with the Sound Stone's song still ringing in her mind. Tomorrow, the fight was back on, but now, she needed rest.

For the first time since Picky's death, Tracy slept soundly.